Stocks fall on belief global recession is at hand

NEW YORK - October 24, 2008 - It was a dramatic day on the Street, with the Dow Jones industrials falling more than 500 points soon after trading began, and, following the pattern of recent sessions, recovering ground only to fall sharply again. The blue chips ended the day down 312 points at the 8,378 level, while all the major indexes fell more than 3 percent.

Grim news from big global companies including Sony and Daimler, coming after disappointing outlooks from some big U.S. corporations, has investors believing there will be a long and deep global recession. The selling also came from hedge funds that had to unwind positions to pay back debts.